Georg Ritter von TrappHeeresgeschichtliches Museum / Militärhistorisches Institut (Hrsg.): Das Heeresgeschichtliche Museum im Wiener Arsenal. Verlag Militaria, Wien 2016, , S. 164 (4 April 1880 – 30 May 1947) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy who became the patriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. After their naturalisation as US citizens, the family name was changed to "Trapp" without the "von".
Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of World War I, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 GRT and two Allied warships displacing 12,641 tons. Trapp's accomplishments during World War I earned him numerous decorations, including the Military Order of Maria Theresa.
His first wife Agathe Whitehead died of scarlet fever in 1922, leaving behind seven children. Trapp hired Maria Augusta Kutschera to tutor one of his daughters and married her in 1927. He lost most of his wealth in the Great Depression, so the family turned to singing as a way of earning a livelihood. Trapp declined a commission in the German Navy after the Anschluss and emigrated with his family to the United States.
After his death in 1947, the family home in Stowe, Vermont, became the Trapp Family Lodge. Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers was adapted into the West German film The Trapp Family (1956), which served as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music (1959) and the 1965 film adaptation directed by Robert Wise.
Early life Georg Ritter von Trapp was born in Zara in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, then a crown land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Croatia. His father, Fregattenkapitän August Johann Trapp (1836-1884), was a naval officer, and his mother, Hedwig Wepler (1855-1911) had immigrated to the Adriatic Coast from the Grand Duchy of Hesse. His father had been raised to the Austrian nobility with the hereditary title of Ritter upon being made a member of the Order of the Iron Crown; he died of typhoid fever in 1884 (aged forty-eight), when Georg was four. Trapp’s older sister was the Austrian artist Hede von Trapp, and his brother Werner died in 1915 during World War I.
Naval career In 1894, aged fourteen, Trapp followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy, entering the Imperial and Royal Naval Academy at Fiume. As part of their required education, all naval cadets were taught to play a musical instrument; Georg von Trapp selected the violin. He graduated four years later and completed two years of follow-on training voyages, including one to Australia, as a cadet aboard the sail training corvette SMS Saida II. On the voyage home, he visited the Holy Land, where he met a Franciscan friar who took him on a tour of all the Biblical sites he wanted to see. Among other things, Trapp bought seven bottles of water from the Jordan River which were later used to baptize his first seven children.
In 1900, he was assigned to the protected cruiser and was decorated for his performance during the Boxer Rebellion in China, in which he participated in the assault on the Taku Forts. In 1902, he passed the final officer's examination, and was commissioned a Fregattenleutnant (frigate lieutenant, equivalent to sub-lieutenant) in May 1903. He was fascinated by submarines, and in 1908 seized the opportunity to transfer to the navy's newly formed submarine arm, or U-boot-Waffe, receiving promotion to Linienschiffsleutnant (ship-of-the-line lieutenant, or lieutenant) that November. In 1910 he was given command of the newly constructed . He commanded U-6 until 1913.
World War I On 17 April 1915, Trapp took command of . He conducted nine combat patrols in U-5, and sank two enemy warships. One was the French armored cruiser , sunk at on 27 April 1915, south of Cape Santa Maria di Leuca. In hunting and sinking Gambetta, Trapp achieved a notable success as commander of the first-ever underwater nighttime (and only the second) submarine attack on a vessel in the Adriatic. Just over three months later, he sank the Italian submarine at on 5 August 1915, off Pelagosa (Palagruža) Island.von Trapp, p. 41. He also captured the Greek steamer Cefalonia off Durazzo on 29 August 1915. Some sources incorrectly credit Trapp with sinking the Italian troop transport and armed merchant cruiser , which resulted in the greatest loss of life in any submarine attack in World War I, but the ship was actually sunk by U-5 under its later commander, Friedrich Schlosser.
Trapp was transferred to the , the former French submarine Curie, which had been sunk and salvaged by the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He conducted ten more war patrols in the much larger submarine, attacking merchant ships instead of warships. Between April 1917 and October 1917, U-14 sank 11 Allied merchant ships under Trapp's command.
In May 1918, he was promoted to Korvettenkapitän (equal to lieutenant commander) and given command of the submarine base at Cattaro in the Gulf of Kotor. However, Austria-Hungary's defeat in World War I led to the empire's collapse. The territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was divided among seven countries, with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes keeping most of the seacoast. The Republic of German-Austria was landlocked and no longer had a navy, putting an end to Trapp's naval career.
War record Trapp's patrols in U-5 and U-14 made him the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of World War I, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 GRT and two Allied warships displacing a total of 12,641 tons.
+ Vessels attacked while in command of U-5 Date Vessel Nationality Fate27 April 1915Sunk5 August 1915Sunk29 August 1915CefaloniaCaptured
+ Vessels sunk while in command of U-14 Date Vessel Nationality Location28 April 1917Teakwood3 May 1917Antonio Sciesa5 July 1917Marionga Goulandris23 August 1917Constance24 August 1917Kilwinning26 August 1917Titian28 August 1917Nairn29 August 191718 October 1917Good Hope18 October 1917Elsiston23 October 1917Capo Di Monte
Orders, decorations and medals Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa (1924) Knight's Cross of the Imperial Order of Leopold Knight 2nd Class of the Order of the Iron Crown (1917) Bronze Military Merit Medal ("Signum Laudis") Military Merit Cross 1898 Jubilee Medal 1908 Jubilee Cross War Medal 1914–1918 with swords Long Service Cross (18 years) Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class (German Empire) Liakat Medal (Ottoman Empire) Order of St. Stanislaus 3rd Class (Russian Empire)
First marriage and inherited wealth
Trapp married Agathe Gobertina Whitehead, the eldest daughter and third child of Cavaliere (Knight) John Whitehead (1854–1902) and Countess Agathe Gobertina von Breunner-Enckevoirth (1856–1945). Whitehead was the son of English engineer Robert Whitehead (1823–1905), who invented the modern torpedo.Georg & Agathe FOUNDATION Honoring the von Trapp and Whitehead Heritage, Georgandagathe.org The British government rejected Whitehead's invention, but Austrian Emperor Franz Josef invited him to open a torpedo factory in Fiume. Trapp's first command was the U-boat U-6, which was launched by Agathe.Sources conflict on whether the marriage took place in January 1911 or January 1912.
Agathe's inherited wealth sustained the couple and permitted them to start a family, and they had two sons and five daughters over the next ten years. Their first child was Rupert,Social Security Death Index as "Rupert Vontrapp" 1 November 1911 – 22 February 1992; 05672 (Stowe, Lamoille, VT); 127-14-1082; Social Security issued in New York born on 1 November 1911 at Pula while the couple were living at Pina Budicina 11.The Villa Trapp is at Pina Budicina 11 at Their other children were: Agathe, also born in Pula; Maria Franziska, Werner; Hedwig, and Johanna, all born at the family home the Erlhof in Zell am See;The Erlhof is at and Martina, born at the Martinsschlössel at Klosterneuburg, for which she was named.The Martinsschlössel is at
On 3 September 1922, Agathe von Trapp died of scarlet fever contracted from her daughter Agathe. Trapp then acquired Villa Trapp in Aigen, a suburb of Salzburg, and moved his family there in 1924.The family villa in Aigen is at During this period, he delivered several lectures and conducted interviews on his naval career.
Second marriage About 1926, Maria Franziska was recovering from an illness and was unable to go to school, so Trapp hired Maria Augusta Kutschera, a novice from the nearby Nonnberg Abbey as a tutor. They were married on 26 November 1927 when he was 47 and she was 22.Petition for Naturalization, Retrieved 5 January 2009 They had three children: Rosmarie, born on 8 February 1929, Eleonore (called Lorli), born 14 May 1931, and Johannes, born 17 January 1939 in Pennsylvania.
Turning to music
In 1935, Trapp's money, inherited from his (English-connected) first wife, was invested in a bank in England. Austria was under economic pressure from a hostile Germany, and Austrian banks were in a precarious position. Trapp sought to help a friend in the banking business, Auguste Caroline Lammer (1885–1937), so he withdrew most of his money from London and deposited it in an Austrian bank. The bank failed, wiping out most of the family's substantial fortune.
At about that time, a Catholic priest, Franz Wasner, instructed the children in music. Around 1936, Lotte Lehmann heard the family sing, and she suggested they perform paid concerts. When the Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg heard them on the radio, he invited them to perform in Vienna. Father Wasner became the group's musical director.
Departure from Austria According to Maria von Trapp's memoirs, Georg von Trapp found himself in a vexing situation after the German takeover of Austria in 1938. He was offered a commission in the German Navy. This was a tempting proposition, particularly when Georg von Trapp saw the technological advances in 1930s U-boats unthinkable compared to those he had once commanded in World War I, but Trapp decided to decline the offer out of opposition to Nazi ideology. He also politely declined a request for the family choir to perform at Hitler's birthday concert. After his eldest son also announced his intention to refuse to benefit from anti-Semitism and to similarly decline a medical position at a prestigious Vienna hospital that had just fired all Jewish doctors, Georg von Trapp realized that the writing was on the wall. (About twenty years earlier, however, Georg von Trapp himself had been deeply anti-Semitic and had mused: "From the Jews one could produce so much soap and bone meal.") He summoned all his children and warned them that no family could safely refuse three successive offers from a man like Adolf Hitler. After Georg advised them that they must choose between a life of comfort or become refugees and keep their honour, the Trapp family decided to emigrate from Nazi Austria.
On leaving Austria, the Trapps traveled by train to Italy (not over the mountains by foot to Switzerland as is depicted in The Sound of Music). The family had a contract with an American booking agent when they left Austria. Once in Italy, they contacted the agent and requested fare to America,. first traveling to London, before sailing to the United States for their first concert tour.
In 1939, the family returned to Europe to tour Scandinavia, hoping to continue their concerts in cities beyond the reach of the Third Reich. During this time, they went back to Salzburg for a few months before returning to Sweden to finish the tour. From there, they traveled to Norway to begin the trip back to the United States in September 1939, just after World War II broke out.